Corporation tax
BBC licence fee , Issue 1641 Remote Controller writes…
WITH the feel of a placed leak, a Sunday Times front page write-off from a Culture magazine piece revealed on 12 January that culture secretary Lisa Nandy was considering replacing the BBC licence fee with funding from general taxation. Bizarrely, though, the pieces also contained a quote from a government spokesperson insisting that this is not government policy. So what’s going on?

Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) mandarins have concluded that the licence fee is doomed (the current deal ends in 2027), due to an irreversible decline in revenue since the prospect of prosecution for not having a TV licence was removed.

The obvious alternative is a subscription system – probably with a free basic public service slate and then stepped add-ons – that BBC iPlayer would be well placed to provide.

However, many corporation executives, broadcast unions and ultra-BBC-loyalist media such as the Grauniad fear this outcome because subscription, rising and falling with demand, could not guarantee the status quo: fixed annual income guaranteed years ahead, a staff of around 22,000, some presenters paid footballers’ wages, and the ability to top up the pension scheme from public money if required (a current such rescue plan for the scheme is in place until 2028).

Weekend flight
The only alternative to the licence fee that could underwrite most of the above is funding from the tax take, so the DCMS, Nandy and the BBC began to explore it and then fly it in the weekend papers. Unfortunately, their intervention coincided with economic pressure on chancellor Rachel Reeves that may include raising taxes.

Suddenly the government understood the nightmare of having to explain, say, why the exchequer was funding Call the Midwife while cutting real maternity services.

And, under the Nandy plan, anyone in or on the BBC would become a de facto government employee. The culture secretary was asked questions last week about BBC 1Xtra playing tracks by rapper Ten (the musical identity of Jake Fahri, out on licence after murdering teenager Jimmy Mizen in 2008), but imagine the fuss if she were actually paying his royalties?

Alternative ending
It also dawned that a tax-funded BBC could rapidly be destroyed by a hypothetical Musk/Farage/Robinson administration simply cutting the funding.

Such possibilities may explain why a Murdoch title was so keen to host the story. Rupe seems to have realised quicker than Beeb managers that tying the supposedly “independent” Beeb even closer to the state would hasten its end.

Hence, reverse ferret on the plan. And stepped subscription now seems the almost certain replacement for the licence fee.